


Cannibalism

by CrumblingAsh



Series: Choke [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: "Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts but My Name is Tony Stark", Break Up, Bruce Is a Good Bro, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Tony Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-31 10:19:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3974452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrumblingAsh/pseuds/CrumblingAsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is in pieces.</p><p>Bruce picks them up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

 

 

_(“I can’t do this anymore. It was stupid to think that I ever could.”)_

Tony’s cold. He’s so damn cold that he can’t feel it; but his hands are shaking under the glare of the lights, trembling so harshly that he has to put the skeleton of the suit’s arm down on the drafting table, lest it break before he can make it invulnerable. His fingers dance over nothing and he watches, watches the dance travel up his arms, his vision quaking as it reaches his shoulders in a shiver that _jars_ his body. He’s cold. He has to be. He shoots a surreptitious glance to his side.

 

Still there, nothing missing.

 

He picks up the soldering gun, something sparkling brightly around his wrist.

 

_(“Wasn’t it?”)_

DUM-E is silent. U and Butterfingers are silent. JARVIS hasn’t said a word other than _sir_ , which had faded into nonexistence with no threat of continuation the second it had come out. Something in the back of his mind nudges, determined yet dulled – call, call, call –

 

He’s supposed to be calling Pepper, right? When was the last time – she gets mad if he doesn’t call when he’s supposed to, when he’s sworn to. He’s trying to be more responsible, more focused on her than on… His eyes sharpen on the frame.

 

Than on the armor.

 

He flips on the switch, ignorant of DUM-E’s faint, urgent beep in response.

 

_(“You’re too much to love like this, Tony.”)_

Pepper’s eyes are a beautiful shade of blue he had never been able to replicate to the arc reactor, despite how many times he had tried – had attempted to imitate in the color scheme of her new office and had failed, too. Now the reactor’s gone, the shades-off blue is gone, Pepper-

 

_‘I’m sorry, I’ll do – I can do better, honey, I swear I can.’_

_(“There’s too much of you that’s already covered, for me to cover you.”)_

He’s sliced the bones of the metal arm clean down the center.

 

Doesn’t realize it until half rolls off to the floor with a sharp crash that makes him flinch.

 

 _‘ **Please** ,’ _his throat remembers saying with a burn. _‘Please, Pep. Pepper, I won’t – don’t leave. Please. I love you.’_

He reaches down to pick it up, and stays down with it.

 

The fire of her had been diminished in front of him, wilting under his words as if he were snuffing out her flame.

 

_(“Tony, stop. Just – no. I can’t anymore. Please don’t. No.”)_

_I need you,_ he had never said.

 

He’s too much. He knows this – he’s always known this. Talks over everyone, outsmarts everyone, steals every second lost to another’s uncertain hesitation and builds himself on top of it. It’s a blanket to toss over people, or a stage to throw in front of them – I’m better than you. He had literally made himself shine.

 

“Tony?”

 

Fuck. He’d been … suffocating her. Drowning her. Stunning Virginia Potts, brilliant and wise and cutting – every possible convention of perfect wrapped into one body, ready to change the world from the inside out, and he’d nearly succeeded in sucking her in and under.

 

“Tony? To- _shit._ ”

 

_(“I’m going to leave now, Tony.”)_

“Tony. Hey, hey. Can you hear me, Tony?”

 

There’s something heavy on his chest, a weight against his scar – warm and solid and not shaking.

 

“I need you to focus on me, Tony, okay? Can you do that? Here-.” Strong fingers grip his wrist, move his hand toward something equally as warm as on his heart. “Make yourself match my breathing. You can do that, can’t you? Of course you can. You’re smart. You’re Tony Stark.”

 

He can feel himself shaking. Breathing? Breathing, right, of course he can breathe. Who the fuck can’t breathe when they have lungs? He’s not missing his lungs. He’s not missing _anything_ , he’s _looked_ –

 

_In-2-3-4---- out-2-3-4---- in-2-3-4---- out-2-3-4----_

everything is _where it’s supposed to be._

“There you go, there you go. It’s okay, Tony, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m – I’m right here. Tony, I’m here. Can you look at me?”

 

There’s another faint, trembling whirr from DUM-E – Tony hears it like a snap, everything rushing to zero in to sharp, nauseating focus.

 

_In-2-3-4---- out-2-3-4---- in-2-3-4---- out-2-3-4----_

It’s not Pepper’s blue eyes, but Bruce Banner’s intelligent, concerned brown ones that are locked, unblinking, on him. Bruce’s large hand on his chest – Tony’s hand held tightly to his. He sees the shimmer again and recognizes the glitter of the shrapnel necklace Pepper had worn around her neck for six months.

 

“Everything’s okay, Tony,” his friend says softly as he blinks at it, something burning, no smoke. The gentleness in the tone makes him want to move away on reflex – he leans forward into space of another person instead. “It’s okay,” Bruce continues in murmur, moves to brush something wet from his face. He flinches again. “I’m here. You’re okay, Tony. Everything’s okay.”

 

_(“I do love you.”)_

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

 

_(“You’re going to be a good man one day, sweetheart.”)_

 

Bruce drowns under a sea of helplessness, the first week of watching Tony drown in a sea of grief. It’s a feeling not unlike the leather of his father’s belt, though instead of lash after lash across the skin of his back with the rattling sting of the buckle to help the count, it’s wrapped around his windpipe, slowly and gently tightening, so that each breath he takes has to be forced, has to be worked for.

 

It would be tempting to stop trying altogether, if Tony would stop trying the same.

 

Bruce knows this pain intimately.

 

“A chandelier would look really stupid, here.”

 

His friend’s voice is raspy – the scent of alcohol-foul breath makes Bruce’s stomach roll in a mixture of disgust and memory – accompanied by the swish of liquid in a glass now mostly guarding ice. From his sprawl on the couch, Bruce casts a wary glance toward the floor, catches the sight of the glass lifted in the direction of the ceiling, traces the connected arm down to Tony’s lax-in-intoxication body, trying its best to be swallowed by the carpet. His clothes are two days old, his stench older, and his considering eyes are glassy as they study the ceiling … or the glass. Right now, they both represent two paths to the same destination.

 

_(“You have such a big heart. You care so much.”)_

 

“Chandeliers are beautiful,” he purposefully disagrees. “Their existence is stupid.”

 

“Over-indulgent?” The eyes shift to him, just for a second, bloodshot and damn curious and exceedingly exposed. Bruce works for one those breaths. “Unnecessary?”

 

“Very.”

 

“Pepper wanted it,” Tony confesses, and it had probably been intended to be a whisper but sounds more like a wounded whine; the habit-born urge to jump up and check his friend for a wound is hard to stamp down, irrational as it is (this isn’t a warzone, no unwanted village, Tony’s _fine_ ). “She likes … sophistication. I’m not sophisticated.”

 

He works for another.

 

_(“You’re going to be good to people.”)_

 

There’s a bag, yellow and torn and more at home in a thrift store, kicked under his bed, full of clothes and notes and room to spare. He’d been packing it, stuffing it carefully (don’t take that, it’s not yours, don’t steal, no leave that, maybe … where’d this picture come from, I’m in it, can I have it? Can’t stay, can’t stay, can’t stay), his skin itching, mind racing so fast it had been silent, when JARVIS had alerted him to a distress in the workshop. That Tony had been distressed in the workshop, panicking, not breathing (“Make yourself match my breathing.”), Pepper gone.

 

Bruce likes to play this game, when he’s trying to torment himself to sleep – what would an idealistic life be like, what could he have, had he not ruined it all? It always starts wonderfully – images of Betty, framed by the sun; a little house in the suburbs, with a fenced in yard and neighbors that smile; a beautiful little girl with her mother’s blue eyes and dimples, who giggles and calls him “Daddy”. It always dies, fades away because he can’t keep the truth from his imagination, can’t keep away the voice that tells him that life would never have happened, will never happen, because he doesn’t deserve it. It dies, and stops, and he’ll cry silently into his pillows until he’s exhausted enough to pass out just to escape it.

 

_(“Don’t listen to your father.”)_

 

Tony’s become a new addition to the thought process – the entire team, really, is some faded background sensation of _maybe?_ but Tony is the string that pulls them forward at all. He’s prominent, a fixture Bruce had blinked and missed the assertion of. Betty … Betty isn’t here (he wonders if that will ever not hurt), but Tony is. Tony is here, in his destroyed present, walks a gritty path parallel to his own, and when he thinks of a perfect life, Tony’s there, too, an anchoring warmth in his mind, and he doesn’t fade away like Betty and the house and the child. He’s a timid, slowly growing promise of a fearful future.

 

Bruce has never had many friends. A handful, less than, of people he can trust. And unlike Betty, Tony is tied to himself, with enough rope left behind to make a problem of it. Losing Pepper is definitely something that is trying to make that extra rope a temptation – Bruce _knows about this pain_ , taking the temptation. He’s tasted the bullet of it.

 

“Disco balls are cool,” he finally says, coming back, watching Tony’s surprised drunken jerk. “Cheap, too. You could put one of those up.”

 

Dark eyes are back on him – they lack the crazed slur of his father’s, the pit of hate and judgment and lack of control. They’re clouded with pain beneath the intoxication, but they’re alert, just enough that it’s obvious Tony is making sense of what he’s saying. Considering it.

 

“Not that I’m an interior decorator or anything,” he adds quietly, feels his face burn. “They’re kind of stupid too, come to think. You could just leave it as is-.”

 

“No,” the other man interrupts immediately. He struggles to sit up (thankfully the glass is almost empty), manages it on the third try with an impressive groan, and looks up to the ceiling again. “No, I like it. Disco ball. Very … retro? Retro. Not sophisticated.”

 

“I’m not a sophisticated guy,” he challenges immediately. Tony snorts, and his eyes go delightfully sharper.

 

“I’m gonna hang twenty. Natasha’ll hate it.” _So would Pepper_ , neither of them say, and then the billionaire is standing. Swaying, but standing. “JARVIS. Doctor Banner wants balls hanging from the ceiling. Place the order, will you?”

 

The tightness of the smile on his face is wrong, but it’s the first smile in a week.

 

Bruce finds that he’ll take it.

 

_(“You’ll be a good man.”)_

**Author's Note:**

>  _"Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. But my name is Tony Stark."_ should just be your mantra, sweetheart.
> 
> Prequel.


End file.
